


Two for Joy

by ancientreader



Category: A Charm of Magpies Series - K. J. Charles
Genre: Anal Sex, D/s, M/M, Nipple Play, Sex Magic, Spanking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-22 09:29:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14305764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader/pseuds/ancientreader
Summary: In which Lucien and Stephen find magpies useful under conditions other than those of combat.





	Two for Joy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jury](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jury/gifts).



> As ever, I owe [TSylvestris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TSylvestris/pseuds/TSylvestris) thanks like whoa, for, as ever, reading the damn thing and telling me what was wrong with it.

Dusk had given way to moonrise; in a certain elegant London drawing room, the curtains had been drawn and the lamps had been lit. With hardly a sound to be heard from the unseen streets, the room took on the quality of sanctuary, separate and apart from the rest of the world. The effect was, one might have said, magical.

A hush had fallen over the two men present. At last, however, one of them spoke:

“Do you know what I like about you, pretty boy?”

Lucien Vaudrey, Lord Crane, who had posed this seemingly rhetorical question, was standing over a very naked Stephen Day. Stephen’s hands were out of commission, being snugly bound at the small of his back, and he was on his knees, looking up at Lucien with parted lips. Slowly, Lucien folded back his shirt cuffs, and then again, till his arms were bare to the elbow. He had shed his jacket and waistcoat but was otherwise fully clad. Because Stephen especially liked them, he had worn his black paddock boots, polished to the highest gloss they would take.

As both Lucien and Stephen were well aware, Stephen could have burst the ties with a thought; Stephen’s willingness not to use his magic signified just how deep his loving abjection could be. _You are the master even of all my powers,_ Stephen was saying, stripped bare, begging, obedient as he was. Aloud he said only, “My lord.”

Lucien smiled, putting a promise in it, and took a fistful of Stephen’s hair. “For example: that urgent desire of yours to get your mouth on me.” He rubbed Stephen’s face over his crotch, ignoring the whimpers that meant _My lord,_ that meant _Please use my mouth, fuck my mouth,_ that meant _I am yours; do as you wish with me._

When all the tension had gone out of Stephen’s body and he had entirely surrendered, Lucien said “Off,” tugging him backward. Stephen gazed up, flushing; his tongue emerged to dab once, lightly, at his upper lip, and the magpie tattoo from his back floated over his shoulder and described a slow arc across his chest and down to his belly, where it paused, wings spread and sweeping in the smallest of arcs, like those of a flesh-and-blood bird soaring on an updraft.

Stephen shivered.

 _Cold,_ Lucien thought: but that wasn’t the kind of discomfort he wanted Stephen to feel, especially not if it might distract him from the fearful pleasures of being at Lucien’s mercy. He bent and scooped Stephen up to carry him closer to the fire.

In Lucien’s arms, Stephen’s pliancy evaporated. He twisted upright and wrapped his legs around Lucien’s waist, hitching his hips and, not incidentally, squeezing and rubbing his hard cock against Lucien’s midsection.

Not so completely surrendered, after all — fighting the need, in fact — so Lucien took him up on it: “Oh, will you?” he snarled. “Try that again and you won’t come off at all tonight.”

“I’m sorry, my lord.” Stephen looked modestly sidelong and down, offering his bent neck to be admired. Lucien would have liked to leave a string of marks from hinge of jaw right down to delicate collarbone — the word “toothsome” came to mind — but though Lord Crane might well get away with such a brazen admission of what he was about, Mr. Stephen Day would not. Lucien therefore contented himself with a sharp bite to Stephen’s earlobe and a whispered threat: “You know that’s not nearly good enough.” He poured Stephen out onto the hearthrug. “Don’t move.”

Stephen lay sprawled, his cock shining wet at its head, his bound hands at the small of his back making of his torso a shallow arch whose awkwardness enhanced the illusion of helplessness. Lucien turned from stoking the fire to look down at him greedily. The hearthrug had come back with Lucien from China; its deep blues set off Stephen’s fair coloring, and the pattern of tiny flowers made Lucien fancy that his lover floated before him on a sea of blossoms.

He allowed himself a few moments with that image. Let Stephen anticipate, shivering with delicious fear, what might come next: Exactly how Lucien would be rough with him. Whether he would take Stephen facedown on the bed, or astride him on the fireside chair. Whether Stephen would have a chance to fight back. And where, afterward, the bruises would be. 

“I’ll do what I like to you,” Lucien said, for the pleasure of seeing Stephen bite his lip and arch higher, offering himself. “Open your legs wider, little slut. I want a good look at my property.”

Stephen obeyed at once, spreading his legs as wide as they would go and bending his knees the better to raise his hips, making of himself both plea and banquet. He was panting now, producing a soft whine at each exhalation, and flushed down to his breast with the not wholly feigned shame of exposure. He was abandoned, depraved, beautiful. At this moment he was entirely Lucien’s possession.

Lucien had to close his eyes to collect himself.

Since his return from China, Lord Crane had had ample experience of the world’s deference to his title and his wealth, and none of the kowtowing had impressed him in the slightest. Nor could it, when he had Stephen at home, offering him the only submission he had ever valued. Stephen — sharp, sparking, fox-haired, brilliant Stephen; brave, capable, ruthless Stephen — chose to lay his breathtaking power at Lucien’s feet.  It was not Lord Crane, but Lucien, whom Stephen called _my lord;_ Lucien would have been _my lord_ even were he dressed in rags _._ _I can never get enough of this,_ he thought. He brought one booted foot to Stephen’s balls and lifted them, pressing up a little, into the tender skin.

The magpie drifted up from Stephen’s belly and drew a wing over his left nipple. He gasped.

His gaze being fixed on Lucien, he could not have seen— Lucien withdrew his foot. “Christ,” he said, “you felt that.”  

“What — ?” Stephen lifted his head, straining. Breathless. “The magpie. Lucien, _the magpie._ ”

“I was regretting your position on the floor, because I was of a mind to handle you. In particular,” Lucien said, in wonder, “in particular, I wished to stroke you just where the bird’s wing did.”

They stared at each other for a moment — but only for a moment, because Lucien had no end of wishes when it came to touching Stephen.

The magpie flew a slow curve over Stephen’s chest, repositioning itself, and settled.

Then, the movement lagging the merest fraction of a second behind Lucien’s thought, it closed its beak sharply on Stephen’s nipple.

Stephen cried out; and now, Lucien saw, a second magpie — it would be the one remaining to Lucien — had appeared on his skin, taking up a position symmetrical with the first. “Stephen — ”

“They’re following on your thoughts, aren’t they,” Stephen said in a strained voice, not making it a question.

Lucien was very nearly frightened. He nodded.

Stephen’s pupils were fully dilated, his eyes fathomless pools of black. He bared his neck and said, “Then I trust them as I trust you” — and the second magpie’s beak closed too, making him hiss and gasp.

Aloud, for the sake of fair warning, Lucien said: “Give them a good tug, now.” With Stephen’s nipples held close in their beaks, the magpies extended their wings and drew them down once, sharply, as if batting against air; Stephen howled and arched his hips high off the sea-of-flowers rug.

“I haven’t repaid you yet for that impertinence you offered me earlier,” Lucien said, softly. Under his gaze, the magpies alternately bit, and tugged, and drew soft wings over the flesh they had made tender. Stephen dug his fingers into the rug. He was tossing his head from side to side, making abortive movements of his hips.

“And,” Lucien went on, “did I not bid you be still?”

Stephen froze. Tears had collected at the corners of his eyes, for the magpies were still at their work, and — to Lucien’s amazement, though he should have known from long association with Stephen and his colleagues that almost anything was possible — his nipples looked heated and sore. “The magpies are going to pinch you now, and hold like that,” Lucien told him. “And as for you, I’ll have you on your knees again.”

Graceful though Stephen normally was, with his hands tied behind him he had to struggle to get off his back and up. Lucien waited, not helping him; when Stephen had succeeded at last and knelt between Lucien’s thighs, his gaze deferentially lowered, the magpies at last opened their beaks.

Lucien took a grip of Stephen’s hair with one hand and rubbed his nipples with the other. “Now, you lovely, willful creature — I wonder what I ought to do with you.”

He did not, in fact, wonder, because Stephen himself had speculated most illuminatingly, abashed and yet defiant, daring Lucien to scoff at him, that very morning as they lay abed.

“I’ve a fancy,” Lucien went on, “to set my hand to that rump of yours and discover just how much I can heat it.”

Stephen bit his lip and gave the most minute twitch of his hips. How he managed at the same time to look plausibly alarmed, Lucien could not for the life of him understand, but that was what happened when your lover was both accomplished at deception and nearly devoid of shame. Lucien tried not to smile, and thought he failed, so it was as well that Stephen’s gaze was humbly downcast.

“Let’s have you,” Lucien said; suiting the action to the word, he hauled Stephen up — “Just like this” — and in the same motion arranged him across his lap and pushed his legs apart.

Stephen wriggled — “None of that!” Lucien laid one hand between Stephen’s shoulder blades and set the other on his posterior. The arse under his hand was as pretty and tempting as the rest of Stephen — small but, as Lucien well knew from long experience of rogering him, succulent. So far he had been leading them to this moment largely to gratify Stephen’s wishes, but now it burst in on him just how good the next several minutes were going to feel to him as well. He gave each side of Stephen’s rump a squeeze, and then another; and then a few more, because Stephen had commenced a string of whispered pleas that made it difficult not to just fling him onto the bed and —

No, no, it wouldn’t do to get ahead of oneself. Lucien raised his hand and brought it down sharply on the undercurve of his lover’s arse; “Oh!” said Stephen. _Pinch,_ Lucien thought at the magpies, evoking a woeful little yelp, and _Christ,_ never mind how far he could heat Stephen’s arse, he himself was in danger of going up in flames, gloriously. He knew, of course he knew, that he was much larger than Stephen, yet to see how much of that fair skin his palm could redden came as a revelation anyway.

He ran his forefinger idly over the sensitive flesh behind Stephen’s balls and around his arsehole. “Shall I fuck you, boy, and let my spend drip out of you?”

“Yes, please, my lord.”

Lucien smacked him, hard. Once. Again. Stephen cried out.

“Say it.”

“Please, my lord, fuck me and — and let your spend drip out of me.”

Lucien stroked and squeezed and slapped; out of view on Stephen’s chest, the magpies alternately bit his nipples and brushed them with their wings, setting a slow rhythm. “And will that remind you whose plaything you are?”

“Please, sir, yes please, it will.”

Lucien trailed his fingertips over Stephen’s bum. The skin was heating nicely, and Stephen’s voice was shaking. Lucien laid down a flurry of slaps on Stephen’s arse and on the backs of his thighs. He was hard as nails inside his trousers now, he wanted out of them, but Stephen was pushing his arse up into the blows and Lucien hadn’t yet given him enough. “Then tell me whose plaything you are.”

“My lord, I am your plaything, only yours.”

 “That’s right, sweet boy, mine” — Lucien laid the blows hard and fast now, Stephen gasping out his pleas, whispering them; Lucien listened for _Lucien, stop,_ but those words didn’t come, so he went on until his palm was sore and Stephen’s arse was dark red; it would bruise, Lucien thought, and at that he couldn’t wait another moment, he wanted that heat around him and against him.

Stephen’s shoulders must be aching by now, limber though he was, so Lucien undid the highwayman’s hitch that secured his wrists and pressed him against himself while he stood long enough to undo his trousers one-handed and fish the little tin of salve out of his pocket. He was almost breathless. Stephen had shaken his arms loose and now he clung to Lucien’s neck, pressing his mouth against the bare skin so that Lucien could feel more than hear his murmuring.

Lucien sat down again, his cockstand between Stephen’s parted legs, and flipped open the tin. He was in too much of a hurry now for finesse so he dug into the salve, brought up as much as he could get on two fingers, and stuffed it and them into Stephen’s bum. “Yes, yes, please, my lord, use me, use me, use me,” Stephen chanted, pushing himself onto Lucien’s fingers, “please, yours, please,” so Lucien withdrew the fingers and seized Stephen by the hips to hold him ready and fucked up into him hard.

They were both making noises — noises, no longer words — Stephen hissed when Lucien squeezed the fever-hot flesh of his arse to pull him in closer, to push himself into Stephen as deep as he could — then Lucien had hold of Stephen’s hips and moved him fast, up and down as if Stephen were Lucien’s hand, as if Lucien were stroking himself, using Stephen’s body to please himself, _using Stephen;_ Lucien had, fleetingly, one almost coherent thought, _the house, the house, why isn’t it falling down about our ears?,_ because he could feel Stephen’s magic surging through him and then back to Stephen again, circling stronger and stronger like one of those great oceanic storms he had seen during his China days —

Stephen cried out, wordless at first and then _Oh, Lucien,_ near anguish; sweat was running from his back, slippery under Lucien’s hands, and he spilled — he would leave bruises on Lucien’s shoulders where he clutched them — he was coming and coming and then Lucien followed him, pressing him close and tight, _mine mine mine_ —

They hung on to each other, winded and heaving like overtaxed racehorses, until Stephen made a small uncomfortable noise and drew himself off Lucien’s prick.

“Look,” Lucien said, not entirely surprised to find himself hoarse.

From Stephen, who was already half asleep, there came only an interrogative hum — but then he caught himself: “Oh! The magpies ... ”

The magpies were sweeping over Stephen’s torso, vanishing, reappearing on Lucien’s arms and shoulders, then back to Stephen — following, Lucien realized, the course of Stephen’s magic as they fucked; slowing gradually, then slower yet, till finally they came to rest: one on Stephen’s back, and the other behind Lucien’s left shoulder, so that when he turned his head as far as he might, he could just see one wing, outstretched.

Lucien mustered himself and got them both to bed; he managed, even, to strip off his ruined clothes and his gleaming boots before he tumbled after Stephen into sleep.

*

Lucien woke to find that a novel idea had come to him overnight. He was eager to share it; but Stephen, he concluded from the complete lack of response to kisses placed on his nape and his bare shoulder, wasn’t likely to stir for some while, so Lucien rose and called for their breakfast, counting on the smell of coffee to serve for a bugle call.

Indeed, he had hardly set knife and fork to rasher before Stephen drifted in, looking sleepy-eyed and content.

“Do you think,” Lucien asked once they had said their good mornings, “there’s any point in my getting a snake tattoo?”

Stephen, occupied in lowering himself as gently as possible onto the pillow with which he had cushioned his chair, failed to take the point, so Lucien reached into his dressing gown to open his smalls and make a thumb-and-forefinger circle around his cock.

“Oh. I see.” Stephen cleared his throat. “A snake. Yes.”

“But it wouldn’t have the magpie magic, though. Would it? So I couldn’t make it do what I liked, as I could the magpies.”

Stephen smiled and pushed up into Lucien’s grip. “Probably not. But . . . I think _I_ could make it do whatever you liked . . . my lord.”

 

  

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If [this rug](http://www.landryandarcari.com/galleries/Antique-Rugs-Chinese/J49715-Antique-Blue-Peking-Chinese-Rug.jpg) were a hearthrug, Lucien would decant Stephen onto it and admire the result. 
> 
> I imagine the magpie tattoos looking something like [this](https://jaaammieee.files.wordpress.com/2008/11/magpie1.jpg).


End file.
